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What makes a CineMaster?

Years of experience, global renown, a career of landmark films and a public fascination with every move they make – and that’s just for starters.

Our ongoing season celebrates directors and key figures from filmmaking history, and gives you the opportunity to watch their work on the big screen.

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CineMasters: Clio Barnard

July 2026

British director Clio Barnard, whose fifth feature I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning premiered to acclaim at Cannes earlier this year, has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary British cinema.

Our latest CineMasters season looks back at Barnard’s previous four feature films, beginning with her experimental documentary The Arbor. Focusing on the life and work of playwright Andrea Dunbar, the film combines documentary and performance, with actors lip-syncing to recordings of Dunbar’s family and friends. It earned Barnard the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2010. We'll also be screening Rita, Sue and Bob Too, directed by Alan Clarke and adapted from Dunbar’s work.

Barnard’s social-realist films include The Selfish Giant, a beautiful and heartbreaking coming-of-age story set in Bradford. She returned to the region for the tender cross-cultural romance Ali & Ava, while in Dark River—loosely adapted from Rose Tremain’s novel Trespass—she explores grief, trauma and family conflict through the story of a woman returning to her rural Yorkshire home following her father’s death.

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